Arms is one of the most gutted, bland and gimped specs out right now. The bulk of its damage comes from a passive bleed, its survivability is sub-par for modern WoW and its mobility is questionable. It needs a baseline mechanic that will give the spec rotational flair but also improve its damage and survival capabilities. That mechanic is Stances.
As before, there would be three Stances: Battle Stance, Defensive Stance and Berserker Stance.
- Battle Stance: a balanced combat stance that increases Rage generation from autoattacks.
- Defensive Stance: decreases damage taken by 20% and damage done by 10%.
- Berserker Stance: grants 4% passive leech and generates Rage based on damage taken.
The return of Stances would give Arms some much needed survivability while also giving it rotational flair and some degree of complexity. Fury and Prot don’t need Stances back because they already have great niches, but Arms would really benefit from their return both practically and thematically. Plus, Arms is supposed to be a “battle-hardened master of two-handed weapons.” Why wouldn’t a cold, calculating, battle-hardened Warrior use different Stances for different scenarios? It’s high time for their return.
While we’re at it, Deep Wounds should return to being an effect triggered from our critical strikes instead of our Mastery. A better Mastery could even be something as simple as “Increases the damage of your Mortal Strike, Execute, etc., and increases the proc rate of Tactician.”
Executioner’s Precision should also return as baseline in some form. It’s unhealthy for the rotation how Execute just completely replaces Mortal Strike during the execute phase. Blizz made an excellent rotational change for Fury by changing their Execute into a high-damage Rage builder so that it doesn’t force Rampage out of the rotation. Bringing back EP for Arms would have a similar positive effect for its rotation.
Thoughts?
25 Likes
Nothing was more fun than playing Arms Warrior in MoP, if they somehow could bring this kind of gameplay back with all the utility spells and stances I’d be the happiest person on earth.
doubt that’s going to every happen and if so it will take a long long time until we have that kind of quality class design back.
6 Likes
There’s hope. Ion admitted that the team realizes they’ve pruned too much. He even talked about Warrior Stances in a recent video. He says that a concern about bringing them back is that it might be jarring for many players to realize they can only cast certain abilities in certain stances. Even so, the fact that Stances are on his mind is hugely encouraging.
With my idea, though, there would be little to no ability restrictions with Stances anyway. I think it would be cool to have one exclusive ability for each Stance, but no more than that.
2 Likes
I have been advocating the return of stances for a very long time.
It is the backbone of what made warriors, it was complex, challenging and rewarding. Stance dancing with macros to equipt a shield or 2h, using charge and intercept through careful calculation…you knew when you went toe to toe with an expert warrior.
Alas those are days all but gone. Unfortunately the depth, complexity and skill needed to master stances may just not be what the current dev team plans for warrior in the games current iteration.
I truly hate to say this but I only see more future pruning and classic being our resort to once again to defensive stance>shield wall>battlestance
1 Like
The class design team admitted they went to far with pruning, so it’s likely they’ll actually give us some old tools back. Ion himself mentioned Stances.
Asking for all the stuff you mentioned, like weapon swap macros and Stance-exclusive abilities, is probably unrealistic, but I think Stances themselves are something that could feasibly return, at least for Arms. We just need to make ourselves heard.
1 Like
If they brought back stances the following patch they’d make them 5x stronger and cooler then give them to monks.
6 Likes
I remember the feeling in Mists when we lost Stances but Monks had a healing stance.
For the idea of the thread, the problem (imo) with Arms is the basic function of the spells. Slam needs to do more than be a bad Rage Dump button, I’d like to see the return of Sunder debuffs based on Slam and weaving the debuff on the target. Let Sunder stack to 3 (to bring Arm’s DPS back up) and have Colossus Smash refresh the debuff if it’s capped and refresh+add a stack if it’s not.
That gives Arms something to track besides Mortal Strike buffs and Colossus Smash CD timers.
~just my 2c~
I would come back and play if they brought back stances. I’ve had BfA since pre order and this is my main at 110. I couldn’t even force myself to preorder, and only subbed last month to hang out with a couple friends online. Which of course, eventually led to me complaining about the state of warriors as I have for years.
The thing about stance dancing is that warrior was one of those classes that was super easy to do right, but - especially with arms - was super difficult to master. A lot of classes were like that, and when they took out those buttons that some people didn’t even have bound, they effectively killed the skill cap of those classes.
2 Likes
The bulk of my damage comes from my warbreaker and mortal strike. The dot tick is third.
I think the idea that it somehow took skill to stance dance is ridiculous.
All Warrior abilities could be macroed into one button. Not to say it was a good idea to rely on every ability with a /cast this or /cast stance1/2/3 that but for the most part it was much more efficient to just macro it in instead of manually swapping with one button and using the spell with another.
Now it took a certain amount of knowledge to know when to go sword & board for a shield slam dispel or shield blocking,revenge spam on that Spriest that just summoned his Mana fiend or anticipating a death coil/hoj reflect etc…
I just think stances were always pretty iconic to warriors and while stance specific abilities are very antiquated giving us baseline stances with unique passives would be cool.
1 Like
Screw that, bring stances back for all the specs. I’d even be fine with retuning charge to not work in combat if we got intercept back.
2 Likes
I can’t decide if Blizzard hates Arms Warriors more than MM Hunters. Whichever individual is responsible for developing the Arms spec in recent times deserves to be fired that the very least, and a case could be made for a public execution - perhaps a similar crucifixion to the one the spec itself has suffered at their hands?
Even on PTR this spec is trash. Damage is below fury, self-healing is below fury, and utility and mobility are not meaningfully better than Fury. So why would you spec Arms when you could spec Fury? You wouldn’t unless you wanted Sharpen Blade for rated PvP or a slightly stronger Bladestorm for M+, and those are both incredibly small niches.
It is nothing short of a farce that the supposed “master of weapons” is the weakest 1 on 1 melee spec in the game. Pathetic game development.
4 Likes
To answer the thread topic, stances are not the answer. Sure bring them back if you like, but Arms already has Defensive Stance as a talent and that doesn’t stop the spec blowing chunks.
If you REALLY want to make Arms a spec on par with other melee give it self-healing that isn’t tied to ridiculous conditions no other classes’ healing abilities are subject to, give it baseline Disarm, Spell Reflect and Shattering Throw, and bring back Retaliation perhaps as a talent.
Also stop funneling a stupid percentage of its’ damage into a bleed mastery none of us who play the spec wants simply because people complained about Arms’ PvP burst. If Arms and Warriors in general are going to bring some of the most underwhelming utility of any class in the game, then people SHOULD be crying about their damage because they bring so little else to the table. Arms is only ever FOTM in PvP when its’ damage is overtuned, and that’s simply because the spec/class’s toolkit STINKS.
I’ve only been saying this for 5-10 years, so I guess the message hasn’t quite filtered through to Blizzard HQ just yet. By the time 12.0 Cluelessbots of Developmentaria hits we should be right as rain.
3 Likes
Stances being baseline would allow us to pick a different talent in that tier. Maybe they could even move Impending Victory to that open space for us to take.
Yes, it’s time.
Seriously, yes.
1 Like
Adding more self healing is the wrong direction. Theres already too much self healing in this game.
1 Like
That’s a fair stance, too. I’m fine with not giving Arms self healing, but then they need to make Arms tankier. If Arms can’t heal their health back, then it should be hard to get their health down in the first place. Defensive Stance baseline would help, and a new talent in that slot could be ideal.
2 Likes
Bring back spell reflect baseline, old improved overpower, stances and prot abilities like shield block. Was it unending assault that caused overpower cast during a castbar to be a -spellpower/healing?
3 Likes
By all means tell me one good reason to break Charge just to gain ability bloat?
1 Like
What’s the point of adding stance dancing if you’re not going to have specific stance abilities?
This whole thread is about ability pruning going too far and Blizzard seems to have gotten on board with it. I wouldn’t even label it as ability bloat anyways because both charge and intercept should be on the same keybind. Also the trade off between intercept and charge was that intercept granted a longer stun duration, specifically useful for PvP. Maybe it could be a PvP talent.
1 Like
Each stance already has enough unique abilities that it is unnecessary to break down existing ones and spreading a stance thin. I’d much rather bring back something like Bloodrage, Banners, and so on.
If you want it for PvP then leave it as a PvP only talent. Just I think you might have a hard time convincing Blizzard (and the community) to give Warriors their stun back.